What are good graphic cards for X, low-end and high-end

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Wed, 04 Jul 2018 13:23:18 +0300
Greg V <greg at unrelenting.technology> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 5:14 AM, Erich Dollansky 
> <freebsd.ed.lists at sumeritec.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I am currently planning a new computer. I have check the wiki but I
> > also would like to get real-life experience here. I have not decided
> > yet of I should get a cheap card just for software development and
> > watching videos or a good card also usable for processing videos.
> > 
> > What cards do you use for these purposes?  
> 
> Video cards aren't that involved in... processing videos :)
> That's why they're often called graphics cards these days.
> 
it was different those days.

> So you need a powerful GPU if you want to:
> 
> - play 3D games
> - use 3D CAD and modeling applications
> - run compute tasks like offline 3D rendering (path tracing), mining 
> buttcoins, deep learning, folding at home... and, yes, rendering some 
> effects in some video editors, but the key word is "some"
> 
These are all things not planned for this machine. As the machine
should be Ryzen based, it still needs some kind of graphics card.

> Now, GPUs also have onboard hardware video codecs, and that can help 
> with watching videos, if you get it to work (have to use a dedicated 
> player right now, since web browsers don't support VAAPI yet, except 
> for some unofficial forks; also YouTube prefers VP9 and only the
> newest (ish) GPUs have a VP9 codec, but you can ask YouTube for
> H.264...) This is only useful for laptops and other mobile devices.
> On a desktop, you don't have to care, the beefy CPU will easily
> decode anything.
> 
> Oh, also these codecs can *en*code videos, but the quality per
> bitrate is always worse in hardware codecs than software, so you only
> really want this for recording gameplay (like ReLive/ShadowPlay).
> 
> So, finally, recommendations -- well, one big recommendation: AMD 
> Polaris.
> If you like (relatively high end) gaming, you might want the top tier 
> one (Radeon RX 480/580) or the one below (470/570).
> Otherwise, RX 460/560.
> 
> FreeBSD support is excellent with drm-next-kmod :)
> 

Our standard suppliers lists mainly RX570/580 cards from different
manufacturers. All around the same price region. So, I will get what it
in stock the day I will finally hot the shop.

Thanks!

Erich